Underneath
by Marika
Summary: a sequal to 'Mask' - Heero puts his two cents in


Oh God.  
  
You know, after all this time, I'd almost convinced myself that the only god I believed in was Shinigami. Yet there I was, sitting on my bed in the dorm room Heero and I share, talking to (or at) the big guy for all I was worth. I absolutely refuse to talk to myself, and if I didn't share with someone, I was going to go after Heero, and even I wasn't sure if I was going to kiss him or kill him. Well, try to, anyway. I'm fairly certain that either attempt would result in a great deal of pain for me.  
  
Screw this. Next time I'm just going to talk to Deathscythe. He's a great listener, and I don't get no backtalk.   
  
So what brought on this? You know, all this time I thought that I had Heero fooled. That he really believed that my mask was the real me. I was sure that he never bothered to look beneath it - I mean, why would he? It was hardly necessary for the mission for him to know what was going on in my head, right?  
  
Wrong. Turns out that every time we had to share a room in one of the schools, he's been paying attention. Practically taking notes every time I had a fucking nightmare. Studying me like I was some sort of strange incomprehensible creature.  
  
All right. The beginning. I had one of those empty nightmares again. You already know which ones I'm talking about, so I'm not getting into that again. It's bad enough when I actually have them, I can't stop thinking about them then, I don't need to start thinking about them now. So anyway, I'd had one of those dreams. I never sleep after one of them. I'm kinda numb, anyway, and I don't want to go back to sleep and have another one.   
  
So anyway, I was laying quietly on my bed, trying not to disturb my bad-tempered roommate, when all of a sudden I heard a step behind me. Well, I'm not a Gundam pilot for nothing, and all things being equal, I think we all know where this is heading.  
  
Anyway, five seconds later Heero and I are on the floor, guns pointed at each others heads. Once I realized who he was and that he wasn't an assassin - well, he wasn't an assassin after me - I got rid of a lot of nervous energy by yelling at him for a while. It's a good thing that the rooms were pretty soundproof, because I was yelling pretty damn loud. Give me a break, OK? I always come out of these dreams feeling like crap, and usually I have a lot of energy to work off. Usually I can't do anything about it - it's not generally a good idea to go wandering around the schools we stay at in the middle of the night, and I rarely sleep right before missions, so I can't work it off by blowing stuff up, either. So I had a good time yelling at Heero for a while about scaring me.   
  
He ignored me, of course. When I finally ran out of insults and obscenities (and it took me a good long while), he asked me flat-out what was wrong. Typical Yuy tact.   
  
After I yelled at him some more, he asked me again. He must have made a mission out of getting an answer out of me, because he wouldn't let it go.  
  
Eventually, he did. Get it out of me, that is. He can be so damned persistent sometimes. It was a long and very uncomfortable process that I won't go into and involved a lot more cursing on my part and glaring on his, but eventually it came out. I wasn't happy.  
  
Let me rephrase that. I was very unhappy. I don't like my mask very much, but it's all I have. Without it, there's nothing, so I was understandably upset when he tore it away from me.   
  
Heero's reaction was quick and to the point. "Baka. If there was nothing else, you wouldn't be able to do what you've done." Then he left for a mission.  
  
Which brings me to where I am now. Leave it to Heero to utter some profound statement like it was the most obvious truth, and then make me feel like an idiot for not seeing it too. Which led to the whole shoot him, kiss him thing that was running around in my head right now. Heero really needs to work on his whole communicate-with-human-beings thing.   
  
So anyway, I still couldn't fall asleep, I was sitting in the dark, Heero was off on some other mission where he'd probably try to blow himself up again, and my arm hurt where Heero punched me when I tried to make him drop his gun. Not that that worked. So basically I was feeling sorry for myself.  
  
But then I started thinking about what Heero said, that I couldn't do everything I've done if there was nothing else to me but the mask. We've already established that I'm a Gundam pilot, that means I'm pretty damn good at something, even if it is just blowing stuff up. But does that actually mean anything? I mean, my mask is good enough for that, right?  
  
But that made me think some more (I've really got to get out of this habit)... could the mask really do it all?   
  
I know I mentioned before that I can't remember who (or what) I was before I put on this mask. But I can remember when I first put it on, what I wanted it to be and what other people should see. What it was supposed to be? That's easy. It was supposed to protect me, keep people from knowing the real me (ha!) so they couldn't get close to me. No people getting close, no pain, right? And what other people were supposed to see? Simple. A smiling face. I've seen too damn many sad, lost, tear-streaked faces in my life. I didn't want to be another, so I promised myself that no one would ever see that on my face.   
  
Most people think that I don't cry, but that isn't true. I do cry. Not very often, but I do cry sometimes. I just never do it where anyone can see. No one has seen me cry in over eight years, from long before Maxwell Church. Nope, not going to see any tears on my face.   
  
But I'm getting off-topic here. The point is that this mask of mine started out as one simple idea - I was going to make sure that I had a smiling face. Not much to base an entire life off of, huh? But my mask isn't just that anymore. It couldn't be, and hold up to scrutiny. So it's more now... not just the smiling face, but the joking personality to go with it, try to make others smile more. And it works, few people even suspect that there's anything beyond it when they meet me. My fellow Gundam pilots know that's not the real me, because they've seen Shinigami in action. If not for that, they probably never would have bothered to take a second look, either.  
  
Before any of you ask, Shinigami is most definitely not the real me. I'd probably kill myself if it was. I haven't quite figured out if it's just another part of the mask, or some remnant of who I used to be. I'm not sure which idea bothers me more. Anyway, Shinigami's a different story entirely.   
  
So my mask has changed. It's an evolving thing, apparently, becoming more and more like a real person the more that I use it around people (specifically, the rest of the Gundam pilots - I don't know why it makes a difference, but it does). Now that's a creepy thought, that I'm sort of growing another personality like an extra appendage.   
  
But now that I think about that, it doesn't feel like something extra. I feel like a real person most of the time. I haven't had to remind myself to wear the mask in years, and except for those damn emptiness nightmares, I don't think about it very much.  
  
So what does that mean? Does it mean that the mask is becoming Duo Maxwell? Or is it the other way around? All right, this is giving me a headache.  
  
The mask isn't a bad person, I don't think, now that it's had some time to develop. I think I might really like to be the person I appear to be, the person I am most of the time.   
  
This is really giving me a headache.   
  
It's the idea of losing whoever I was to become this person that I created so spur-of-the-moment that bothers me, I guess. The idea of losing anything like that bothers me. And also, there's the question of whether the mask really can become a real person. I mean, can something built on a foundation of nothing really be something at all? I told you about that stupid image I have, about peeling away the layers of skin and having nothing underneath. Can you build something on that nothingness and expect to have it last? It'd be like building the outer shell of a Gundam without any mechanical or electrical equipment inside. In effect, a useless shell.  
  
I've been hanging around Heero too much, I'm beginning to think in purely military terms.   
  
Shit. I just remembered that Heero's the one who started this entire line of thinking. He's a no-nonsense kinda guy, and he likes answers. Straight, clean answers, with everything all wrapped up. No wonder he likes computers so much, can't get a partial answer out of them. It's either yes, no, or cannot compute. He's going to want to talk to me when he gets back, I think.  
  
Or maybe not. I honestly don't know where the hell his sudden interest in me came from, and I'm kinda hoping that it went back to wherever the hell it came from. I really don't want to discuss this with him.  
  
On the other hand, I don't have any of the answers myself, and if I don't get some sort of answer, I'm going to keep thinking about this, I just know it. It's just going to go around and around in my head until I go crazy. (Well, more crazy.)  
  
I don't know why I'm worrying about this at all. It's not like I'm going to have any choice in the matter. If Heero decides he wants to hear about it, he'll sit there and glare at me and repeat himself in that monotone of his until one of us gives in. And it won't be him.   
  
I wonder why he asked me what was wrong.  
  
  
  
  
Well, some people asked me for a sequel, and here it is. It doesn't sound much like the original, even though it's on the same topic, mostly because I wasn't quite as tired when I wrote it, and because Duo can't just sit around and feel sorry for himself all the time. (Besides, it's not in his character to stay permenantly depressed.) I'll probably write one or two more, eventually.  
Feedback very much appreciated.  
Marika 5/7/01 


End file.
